More than two dozen Chattanooga business owners are condemning a bill to require student immigration background checks in Tennessee’s public schools as “economically reckless.”
The Tennessee Small Business Alliance represents restaurants, real estate firms, retail stores and other local employers operating within the district represented by Sen. Bo Watson.
Watson, a Republican, is cosponsoring the legislation to require proof of legal residence to enroll in public K-12 and charter schools. The bill would also give public schools the option of charging tuition to the families of children unable to prove they legally reside in the United States – or to deny them the right to a public education altogether.
House Leader William Lamberth of Gallatin is a co-sponsor of the bill, which has drawn significant — but not unanimous — support from fellow Tennessee Republicans. Lamberth’s version of the bill differs from Watson’s in that it would make it optional — rather than mandatory — to check students’ immigration status in all of Tennessee’s more than 1700 public schools.
The bill, one of the most controversial being considered during the 2025 Legislative session, has significant momentum as the Legislature winds down for the year even as it has drawn raucous protests at times. The legislation will next be debated on Monday in a House committee.
A statement released by the business alliance described the legislation as a “political stunt that’s cruel, economically reckless, and completely out of step with local values.”
Citing estimates compiled by the nonprofit advocacy organization, American Immigration Council, the statement noted that more than 430,000 immigrants in Tennessee paid $4.4 billion in taxes – more than $10,000 per immigrant.
Watson, in an emailed statement from Chattanooga public relations firm Waterhouse Public Relations, said his bill “raises important questions about the financial responsibility of educating undocumented students in Tennessee—questions that have long gone unaddressed.”
The statement said the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe, which established the right to a public school education for all children regardless of immigration status, has “never been re-examined in the context of today’s challenges.” The statement said Watson is committed to a “transparent, fact-driven discussion about how Tennessee allocates its educational resources and how federal mandates impact our state’s budget and priorities.”
Watson has previously also said the legislation was prompted, in part, by the rising costs of English-language instruction in the state’s public schools.
Democrats have criticized that argument as based on inaccurate assumptions that English language learners lack legal immigration status.
Kelly Fitzgerald, founder of a Chattanooga co-working business and one of 27 employers that signed onto the statement of condemnation, criticized lawmakers.
“Do our representatives believe that undocumented children — who had no say in their immigration status — should be denied a public education, even though their families already pay taxes that fund our schools?” said Fitzgerald, whose own children attend Hamilton County Public schools
“My children are receiving a great education in our public schools, and I want every child to have the same rights and opportunities as mine do,” she said.
“In my opinion, this is not something our legislators should be spending their resources on when there are much larger issues at hand in the current environment,” she said. “We should leave children out of the conversation.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: [email protected].
Texas teachers may be increasingly fed up with their job, but they’re still staying in school.
State data shows Texas public school educators continue to return to the classroom at somewhat similar rates as years past, despite multiple surveys showing the large majority of them have contemplated quitting the profession.
While teacher turnover has slightly increased over the past decade, state data show there hasn’t been a large exodus of experienced teachers. In fact, the average years of experience for Texas public school teachers hasn’t notably changed since 2014-15, nor has the share of first-year teachers hired by districts.
The numbers run counter to years of warnings that Texas teachers are primed to bolt en masse out of frustration with the job. At the same time, Texas does still face widespread issues with morale, as well as big challenges in finding certified teachers and filling several types of positions, including special education educators and bilingual teachers.
Steady hands in schools
While much has changed in Texas classrooms over the decade, students continue to be educated by mostly veteran teachers. The average tenure for Texas teachers has held steady during that stretch, ranging from 10.9 to 11.2 years of experience.
The state did see a slight dip in the share of first-year teachers — who, on average, have less positive impact on student achievement than other educators — during the late 2010s, then a slight uptick over the past few years. Still, novice teachers account for fewer than 1-in-10 Texas educators.
A small rise in turnover
Teacher turnover, a measure of how many educators don’t return to teach in the same district each year, has ticked higher since the pandemic. While it once hovered near 16 percent, it’s reached roughly 20 percent over the past two years.
Ultimately, a 4 percentage point difference equates to about 15,000 more teachers who aren’t returning to a classroom in their district. However, state data shows teachers of all experience levels are leaving at similar rates.
Still stressed
Teachers might be sticking with their jobs, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy about it.
A 2024 poll of 1,100 Texas teachers by the Charles Butt Foundation, an Austin-based education advocacy nonprofit, found nearly four-fifths of educators surveyed had seriously considered quitting the profession in the past year. Pay, quality of campus leadership and a sense of feeling valued ranked among the biggest factors in whether teachers had considered quitting.
Texas education leaders also are worried about the state’s ability to retain teachers and hire tough-to-fill positions. A state panel convened by the Texas Education Agency examined the issues and made numerous recommendations in 2023, though few of its proposals have been put into action.
Nearly 25% of college students in 2020 reported
limited or uncertain access to food. Despite being potentially eligible,
most didn’t receive Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP)
benefits—formerly known as “food stamps”—which could help them pay for
food.
A recent law gave the Department of Education
authority to share students’ Free Application for Federal Student Aid
data with federal and state SNAP agencies to identify and help students
who may be eligible for benefits.
But Education hasn’t made a plan to start sharing this data—nor have states received guidance about this opportunity.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of
Education have taken some steps to connect college students with
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help them
pay for food, but gaps in planning and execution remain. Effective July
2024, a new law gave Education authority to share students’ Free
Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) data with USDA and state
SNAP agencies to conduct student outreach and streamline benefit
administration. However, according to officials, Education had not yet
developed a plan to implement these complex data-sharing arrangements.
This risks delays in students getting important information that could
help them access benefits they are eligible for. Following the passage
of this new law, Education began providing a notification about federal
benefit programs for students who may be eligible for them. However, it
has not evaluated its method for identifying potentially eligible
students. According to GAO analysis of 2020 Education data, Education’s
method could miss an estimated 40 percent of potentially SNAP-eligible
students.
USDA encouraged state SNAP agencies to enhance student outreach and
enrollment assistance. However, USDA has not included important
information about the use of SNAP data and other student data in its
guidance to state SNAP agencies. These gaps in guidance have left states
with questions about how to permissibly use and share students’ data to
help connect them with benefits.
Student Food Assistance at a College Basic Needs Center
Officials from the three selected states and seven colleges GAO
contacted described key strategies for communicating with students about
their potential SNAP eligibility. These include using destigmatizing
language, linking students directly to an application or support staff,
and coordinating outreach efforts with SNAP agencies. Officials from the
states and colleges GAO contacted said it is helpful to have staff
available on campus to assist students with the SNAP application. Some
colleges have found it helpful to partner with their respective SNAP
agencies to obtain information on the status of students’ applications.
Why GAO Did This Study
According to a national survey, almost one-quarter of college
students were food insecure in 2020, yet GAO found many who were
potentially eligible for SNAP had not received benefits. The substantial
federal investment in higher education is at risk of not serving its
intended purpose if students drop out because of limited or uncertain
access to food. Studies have found using data to direct outreach to
those potentially eligible can increase benefit uptake.
GAO was asked to review college student food insecurity. This report
addresses (1) the extent to which Education and USDA have supported data
use to help college students access SNAP benefits, and (2) how selected
states and colleges have used student data to help connect students
with SNAP benefits.
GAO reviewed relevant federal laws and agency documents. GAO also
interviewed officials from Education, USDA, and national higher
education and SNAP associations. GAO selected three states and
interviewed officials from state SNAP and higher education agencies and
seven colleges in these states. GAO visited one selected state in person
and interviewed two virtually. States were selected based on actions to
support food insecure students and stakeholder recommendations.
Recommendations
GAO is making five recommendations, including that Education develop a
plan to implement FAFSA data-sharing and assess its benefit
notification approach; and that USDA improve its SNAP agency guidance.
The agencies neither agreed nor disagreed with these recommendations.
The
Secretary of Education should develop a written plan for implementing
provisions in the FAFSA Simplification Act related to sharing FAFSA data
with SNAP administrators, to aid in benefit outreach and enrollment
assistance. (Recommendation 1)
Department of Education
The
Secretary of Education should, in consultation with USDA, evaluate its
approach to identifying and notifying FAFSA applicants who are
potentially eligible for SNAP benefits and adjust its approach as
needed. (Recommendation 2)
Department of Education
The
Secretary of Education should inform colleges and state higher
education agencies that FAFSA notifications are being sent to applicants
who are potentially eligible for SNAP benefits. (Recommendation 3)
Department of Agriculture
The
Administrator of USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service should, in
consultation with Education, issue guidance to state SNAP agencies—such
as in its SNAP outreach priority memo—to clarify permissible uses of
student data, including FAFSA data, for SNAP outreach and enrollment
assistance. (Recommendation 4)
Department of Agriculture
The
Administrator of USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service should issue
guidance to state SNAP agencies—such as in its SNAP outreach priority
memo—to clarify the permissible uses and disclosure of SNAP data to
support SNAP student outreach and enrollment assistance. (Recommendation
5)
Joseph Morrison-Howe is an undergraduate Economics student at the University of Nottingham. He completed an internship with HEPI during the summer of 2024. In this weekend long read, he discusses the history of marketisation in higher education and considers whether applicants have enough information to make informed judgements about where and what they study.
Executive summary
Study at university can be hugely beneficial for students intellectually, socially and financially. However, degrees that lead to low earnings can make individuals who study in higher education financially worse off and can impose an external cost on the taxpayer. This HEPI Policy Note uses the economic framework of market failure to argue it is likely that too many students are studying degrees that result in low earnings. Applicants should be free to choose a course according to their preferences but, they need to be encouraged to use salary outcome data to help them make an informed decision about what degree to study.
Key findings:
Existing data suggest that one in five graduates would have been financially better off not entering higher education at all. Some 40% of undergraduate students might have chosen a different route, although only 6% would not have entered higher education.
This report argues that reforms announced in 2022 to the repayment terms of student loans, from the old Plan 2 to the new Plan 5 system, will likely make university financially worthwhile for fewer students.
The graduate premium, the difference between the earnings of graduates and non-graduates, is also likely to decrease as the National Living Wage increases the wages of non-graduates.
This report proposes imperfect information as a possible cause of market failure. Prospective students should make best use of information about graduate earnings when choosing what, where or whether to study at university. The official website for information about higher education, Discover Uni, had less than 7,000 website visits in July of 2024. In the same month, nearly half a million visited the website of the Complete University Guide, an online university league table.
Policy recommendations:
Discover Uni data about graduate earnings should be displayed on UCAS so that more students use this information when making decisions about university studies.
Satisfied average graduate earnings for each course should be displayed alongside the annual salary for National Living Wage work and the average graduate and non-graduate salaries. This should help students judge if studying individual courses would be financially worthwhile.
Careers advisors should support applicants to be fully informed about the benefits of higher education – including that not everyone is financially better off for attending university.
Market analysis and higher education
Prior to the 1830s, one would be hard-pressed to convincingly describe higher education in England as a competitive market – a place where many buyers choose to buy goods or services from many sellers, who compete to win the choice of these buyers. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge maintained a duopoly (a market dominated by two sellers) for nearly 500 years.[i] Since the early nineteenth century, changes in government policy, alongside growth in the number of universities and students, have meant higher education in England has taken on more of the characteristics of a market.
The barriers to becoming a university in England have decreased over time and choice for students has broadened. Prior to the Coalition Government of 2010, the following changes happened to the higher education sector which incidentally laid the foundation for marketisation:
Growth in the number of universities, which provided more choice for students;
growth in student numbers; and
the formation of UCAS (originally UCCA, the Universities Central Council on Admissions), providing a ‘single nationwide application process’, creating a sector that resembled a marketplace.[ii]
It was the introduction and gradual increase of tuition fees paid by the student as opposed to funding via grants from the Government that really introduced market incentives to higher education in England.
By the 1990s, with growing demand from students, the government’s ability and willingness to fund the higher education sector came into question; between 1976 and 1996, government funding per student fell by 40%, according to the Dearing Report.[iii] As a result, the greater burden for funding higher education fell on students. Tony Blair’s government introduced ‘top-up’ fees of £1,000 paid upfront by students in 1998 to supplement government funding. In 2004, the fees rose to £3,000, covered by an income-contingent loan.
The Coalition Government’s rise in tuition fees to £9,000 caused the most significant change in the structure of the higher education sector in England. This is because, as David Willetts (then University Minister) wrote, the new higher fees largely
replaced funding via a Government agency providing grants to universities with funding via the fees (funded by loans) which students brought with them.[iv]
Consequently, to attract funding for teaching, universities had to compete to attract students, as the funding came directly from students. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) wanted ‘to ensure that the new student finance regime supports student choice, and that in turn student choice drives competition’.[v] The characteristics of choice and competition that BIS wanted to introduce are the key characteristics of a market.
The new funding model increased competition between universities for students, first because they received funding for each student they taught and secondly, because these policy changes allowed for the removal of student number caps, which had thus far artificially limited the number of places institutions could provide. More places were made available and students were given more meaningful choice about where to study.
The increasing number of universities and the introduction of UCCA were not policies intended to create a market, but there is evidence from the coalition government of purposeful marketisation. The 2011 white paper ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ from BIS showed their clear intention to introduce what they referred to as ‘a more market-based approach’ to higher education with the new funding system.[vi] The Coalition Government’s support for the new funding system was not just as a solution to the instability and underfunding of the grant-based system but because of the market incentives a fee-based funding model would introduce.
Not all aspects of the current higher education sector in England operate like a typical market. Entry requirements mean that students’ ability to choose between universities is contingent on the grades they achieve (but the growth in the number of universities means that for a given set of grades, a student can choose between many universities). Also, students only bear the cost of their studies if they can afford to do so, as student loan repayments are only made above a particular level of earnings. In typical markets, consumers bear the cost upfront. Though important for making university studies accessible, we will see, the fact that payment is not made upfront makes the sector vulnerable to market failure.
Despite these qualities, it is clear the sector has been marketised:
students now have more choice, and
universities now engage in more competition.
There are lots of reasonable critiques of marketisation. Nevertheless, since marketisation has taken place, it can be useful to apply economic analysis to higher education. This report considers the higher education sector as a market and consequently uses economic analysis to assess if the higher education sector works efficiently for both students and wider society. The purpose of this economic analysis is to identify how to improve the higher education sector so it works best for students and wider society.
Markets and market failure in higher education
Marketisation policies introduce characteristics of a market in the hopes that the outcomes of a market will materialise. The prized outcome of markets is efficiency. An efficient market is one where the resources are allocated to give the best outcomes for society; choice allows the allocation of students to the university that best suits them, and competition incentivises the allocation of university funds where they will most improve the institution. If a market is efficient, the allocation of resources cannot be changed to make someone better off without making someone else worse off.
The outcome of markets is not always efficient; markets are prone to fail.
Market failure occurs when resources are not allocated efficiently, to give the best outcomes for the consumer and wider society.
A market failure usually results in:
too much of a good being provided;
too little of a good being provided; or sometimes,
none of a certain good being provided at all.
One example of market failure might be the market for antibiotics. If antibiotics are cheap to buy, people might purchase them even if they are not sure they need them. Over time, the overuse of antibiotics can lead to the development of antibiotic resistance, where antibiotics no longer work for the people who really need them. This is a case where market failure has led to a good being provided in excess and a more efficient outcome would see less of it provided.
This report focuses on the higher education market failing and allocating too many students to degrees that result in low earnings. In this section, I discuss how students studying degrees that lead to low earnings can result in market failure, under certain conditions. In the next section, I will analyse a possible cause of this market failure.
Market failure: degrees that lead to low earnings
For the majority of graduates, studying at university gives them — and the wider economy — good financial returns. However, the market fails and allocates too many students to courses that will lead to low graduate earnings (‘low-earning degrees’). This makes individual graduates financially worse off, compared to if they had not gone to university, and imposes an external cost on the taxpayer.11 In this case the choice of degree (or to study at all) has led to suboptimal outcomes for the individual (the student) and wider society and is therefore a case of market failure.
There is evidence to suggest many students believe they would have been individually better off making a different choice of degree, institution or even entire pathway (such as doing an apprenticeship instead). In the 2024 HEPI / Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey, four in ten students said they would have been better with a different choice (though only 6% would not have entered higher education).[vii] This suggests these students think there was a more efficient way of allocating (their own) resources even before they know what their lifetime earnings will be.
Not all degrees that result in low earnings are necessarily cases of market failure. There is only a market failure present if there could have been a better allocation of resources, that is, students could have made a different choice that bettered themselves or wider society.
It is likely many students do not just think about earnings when they consider the value of their degree. If the individual valued their Philosophy degree for other reasons – they enjoyed the content, valued the overall university experience, and so on – it may still have been worth it for them even if it did not increase their earnings. In this case, a degree like Philosophy may have been the best option for society if these benefits to the individual student outweigh the lower earnings (and another other costs to both the student and wider society). If so, the allocation would still be efficient and this would not be a case of market failure.
Another situation where a low-earning degree may not be a case of market failure is when the degree has such large social (as opposed to individual) benefits that the choice of any other alternative would lead to a worse outcome for society. For example, if a student studies to be a social worker and this leads to low earnings, the benefits to society that stem from the social work degree will be large enough that any other choice on the student’s behalf would have made society worse off.
The examples of Philosophy and Social Work degrees are not cases of market failure because of the benefits they offer to either the individual or the rest of society. These benefits are not easily quantifiable, so it is difficult to determine which low-earning degrees are examples of market failure and which are not. Below, I will argue that if students are given clear information about the earnings from different degrees, they will be more capable of making that judgement themselves.
The effect of too many students studying low-earning degrees (before reforms to loan repayment terms)
For individual students, there is a financial consequence of choosing to study a degree that will likely result in low earnings. A 2020 report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) looked into the impact of undergraduate study on lifetime earnings. The report estimated that ‘one in five undergraduates would have been better off financially had they not gone to university.’[viii]
The IFS compared the lifetime earnings of a cohort of graduates to a counterfactual group that did not attend university, accounting for the difference in income tax, National Insurance and student loan repayments the graduates will have paid over their working life compared to the non-graduates. They then calculated the net lifetime returns for graduates, defined as ‘the lifetime gain or loss in earnings as a result of attending higher education for the individual, after taking into account the effect of the tax and student loans system.’[ix] The IFS found that a fifth of graduates earn less over their lifetimes than if they had not entered higher education.
Not all of the 20% of graduates that would have been better off had they not entered higher education will be cases of market failure. Some may be a Philosophy student that places a high personal value on the knowledge they gained, some may be social workers that provide great value for society, others may have studied a high earning degree and not utilised it. Furthermore, changing the discount rate the IFS use changes the proportion of students that finically benefited from higher education, as David Willetts points out. [x] Though, the IFS results are clear that not everyone entering higher education benefits from it financially.
When students choose to study a low-earning degree, there is also an external cost to the taxpayer. This external cost (a cost to a third party not involved in the transaction) arises because the taxpayer must cover the proportion of a student loan which a graduate has not paid back by the time their loan is written off. Prior to the implementation of reforms in the repayment terms of student loans announced in 2022, only 27% of graduates were estimated to repay their student loan in full.[xi]
The resource allocating and budgeting (RAB) charge is used to estimate the ‘cost to Government of borrowing to support the student finance system’. London Economics, an economics consultancy, estimated that the RAB charge for the 2022/23 cohort of students (who began their studies before the implementation of the 2022 reforms) was 10.2%. That is, the government was expected to cover 10.2% of the total value of the student loans taken out that year.[xii]
These costs, imposed on the student and wider society, might be avoided if students chose different degrees. Future earnings can be altered by a student’s choice of course to study and choice of institution to study at:
Even when comparing students with similar prior attainment and family background, different degrees appear to have a significantly different impact on early career earnings. Studying medicine or economics increases earnings five years after graduation by 25 per cent more than studying English or history. Attending a Russell Group university increases earnings by about 10 per cent more than the average degree.[xiii]
If students who chose to study low-earning degrees had instead chosen to study higher-earning degrees, they would have been less likely to impose an external cost on the taxpayer. Though, as I will explain, reforms to the student loan system mean the external cost to the taxpayer is now very small. Importantly, those students would also be more likely to give themselves positive net lifetime returns to their studies. These outcomes could make society better off. The current allocation of too many students to degrees that result in low earnings is an inefficient one. In the sense defined above, the higher education market is failing.
The impact of the reforms to the repayment terms of student loans (the move from Plan 2 to Plan 5)
The reforms announced in 2022 to the ‘Plan 2’ repayment terms on student loans have shifted the financial burden of low-earning degrees from the taxpayer to the graduate.
Under the new Plan 5 system, the income threshold at which graduates begin to make loan repayments was lowered from £27,295 to £25,000, the repayment period (after which loans are written off) was lengthened from 30 years to 40 years and the interest rate on student loans was reduced from RPI+3% down to just RPI (a measure of inflation).[xiv] These reforms have an uneven effect on graduates across the income distribution.[xv] The reduction in the repayment threshold will mean that lower-earning graduates will pay back more of their debt, and some will begin to pay it back for the first time. The lengthening of the repayment period will mean that low-earning graduates will pay back their loan for longer. The lowering of the interest rate will mean that high-earning graduates (who always would have paid back their loan in full) will now make smaller interest payments.
London Economics estimates that the RAB charge under the new terms of repayment will fall to 4.1% from 10.2%. This means that the reforms have transferred the costs of low-earning degrees from the government, which will now have to write off less debt, to the graduate, who must pay back more of it. As low-earning graduates will now make larger student loan repayments, attending university will not be financially worthwhile for more of them.
A fair assumption is that, since costs are only incurred in the future, prospective students will not be very responsive to these reforms by choosing low-earning degrees in lower numbers. Even after maximum fees were raised from around £3,000 to £9,000 in 2012, there was no significant long-term decrease in the number of applicants.[xvii] If this is the case, a greater proportion of students will now have negative net lifetime returns from their studies. Therefore, for this reform to have a positive outcome on low-earning graduates, these impacts would have to be available and clearly explained to prospective students.
The graduate premium and positive financial returns
The graduate premium is the increase in salary attributed to achieving a degree. To receive positive financial returns from studying, one’s graduate premium must be larger than their loan repayments and increased income tax and National Insurance payments. There is evidence to suggest that the graduate premium has fallen as the higher education sector has grown. Due to increases in the minimum wage, I believe the graduate premium is likely to fall further. This is likely to put a strain on the amount of students experiencing positive financial returns.
As the number of graduates increased throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, it was thought that the graduate premium would decrease. This is, in part, because as the supply of graduates increased their scarcity reduced meaning the premium an employer would pay to hire a graduate over a non-graduate should have fallen. A 2021 study by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and a team at the University of Warwick found early evidence of a 7-percentage point decline in the graduate premium.[xviii]
Recent increases in the National Living Wage are likely to further reduce the graduate premium by increasing the average wage of non-graduates. To make the UK a high-wage economy, the Government has been using National Minimum Wage legislation to increase the pay of the lowest paid. In 2020, the Conservative Government asked the Low Pay Commission to ensure the National Living Wage was two-thirds of median earnings by 2024, a target which has now been met.19 Assuming non-graduates are more likely than graduates to earn the National Living Wage. As National Living Wage has increased in relation to median pay, the average wage of non-graduates will have likely increased more than that of graduates. The graduate premium is likely to have further declined. As a result, for more students, it will not have been financially worthwhile to attend university.
Conclusion
In this section, I argue that there is a market failure and too many students are choosing to study degrees that result in low earnings. The reforms to the repayment terms of student loans and a possible decline in the graduate premium are likely to increase the proportion of graduates who are financially worse off for having gone to university. The next section of this Policy Note attempts to explain why this market failure of too many students choosing to study low-earning degrees is taking place.
The causes of market failure in higher education
This section will look at imperfect information as a possible cause of the market failure. There are other possible causes, such as low teaching quality or the fact that an individual student’s decision about whether and where to study also has effects on wider society. The government’s provision of information about graduate salaries is thought to have solved the problem of imperfect information. But this Policy Note focuses on imperfect information because prospective students are not seeing the information about graduate salaries.
Imperfect information occurs when all the parties in a transaction do not have full information about the transaction. If applicants do not know about the career prospects of a low earning degree, they may choose to study it thinking it will enhance their career prospects and then struggle to find a well-paying job after graduation. This could cause an inefficient allocation of students to courses.
People familiar with the higher education sector could likely name the universities that frequently top league tables and which subjects generally lead to high earnings. They may therefore may believe that applicants have roughly enough information to choose the best course for them. This knowledge is not common for all applicants, particularly for applicants who will be the first in their family to attend university (now roughly two-thirds of current undergraduates).[xx] An A-level student who I tutor recently demonstrated that some applicants do not have perfect information about university courses. I asked him out of the universities he wanted to apply to, which he would most like to attend. He wanted to study Management. He said he would like to go to university x “because they have a brand-new building for the business school.” I then showed him that average earnings for Management graduates 5 years after completing university x’s course were over £20,000 less than those of another university he planned to apply to. After this conversation, he chose not to apply to university x. Not all applicants have sufficient knowledge about university courses and this can cause them not to choose the course that would have been best for them.
While introducing marketising reforms since 2010, successive governments have been keen to ensure that applicants do not have imperfect information. A 2016 white paper stated an ambition for ‘more competition and informed choice into higher education’.[xxi]
As a result, prospective students now arguably have access to enough information to make informed choices. The official website for information about higher education, Discover Uni (formally Unistats) provides a wealth of information to prospective students. Discover Uni has information on student satisfaction, the entry grades of past students and information about career prospects for each course at a given university. Data from the Graduate Outcomes Survey and the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes data set are used to provide prospective students with information about the employment rate of past graduates and their earnings 15 months, three years and five years after completing a course. The wealth of information available to prospective students suggests that imperfect information cannot be the reason for too many students choosing courses that will lead to them earning less over a lifetime than if they had not studied at all.
Although prospective students have access to information about employment prospects on the Discover Uni website, few choose to use it. In July 2024, only 6,600 people visited the website.22 In the same month, 481,800 people visited the website of The Complete University Guide, an online university league table, suggesting rankings like these are used more often to make decisions about what and where to study. In the same month, 1,100,000 people visited the UCAS website (the main way to apply for higher education in the UK), which gives an indication of just how many see the information about courses and institutions it provides.
The problem may not be imperfect information, but imperfect knowledge. That is, it is not the lack of availability of information that means too many students study degrees that are not financially worthwhile but instead that applicants are not seeing the information about employment prospects.
Ensuring students see information about graduate salaries will help to correct the market failure of too many students choosing to study low-earning degrees, but it may not fully address information problems. This is because, graduate outcomes data is not a perfect indicator of what a given prospective student will earn. Past data on graduate outcomes cannot tell a prospective student about future labour market changes. However, compared to using no data at all, graduate outcomes give prospective students a good indicator of what they are likely to earn.
Graduate outcomes data may not be currently used because students (and teachers) might not fully understand the implications of the new Plan 5 repayment system. Students may have less incentive to find out the financial returns of a degree if they think a negative return would be covered by the government ‘safety net’. It may therefore be more important than ever to explain that since the 2022 reforms, most students will pay back all or almost all of their loans themselves.
The next section of this report shall propose recommendations to improve the use of the data on Discover Uni.
Policy response
Some students are choosing to study degrees that will likely lead to them having low earnings. When applying to university, students are not using the information about graduate salaries for specific courses, provided on the Discover Uni website. Without the proper use of information about how financially worthwhile degrees are, a fifth of students choose degrees that result in them earning less over their lifetime than if they had not studied at undergraduate level.9
The choice of what and where to study is an individual one; it may depend on what dream job one had as a child, the fact one may have to stay close to home to care for a relative or because one wants to improve their lifetime earnings. Regardless of why one chooses to study a given course, as it is now the student who is most likely to pay for their studies, they should be free to choose what and where to study. However, students should be exposed to the reality that their choice of course may result in them earning less over a lifetime than if they had not studied at university. Students should be encouraged to use information about graduate outcomes and this information should be explained to them. Careers advisors should explain that not all degrees are financially worthwhile and help applicants navigate the available information on graduate salaries.
To prevent students from unknowingly choosing courses that will likely lead to them earning low salaries, information about graduate outcomes should be made more usable. Therefore, the main recommendation from this HEPI Policy Note is that all of the data on Discover Uni (the government website for data which students rarely use) should be integrated into the UCAS pages for individual courses. This includes the salary outcomes for each course, or the lowest level of granularity Discover Uni provides. This makes it more likely that students applying for a course via UCAS will use this information to better inform their decisions.
Discover Uni graduate earnings data should be stratified before it is integrated into UCAS information pages. This involves weighting graduate earnings by social background, reflecting the proportion each social group represents in the wider population. Stratification would ensure that high earnings statistics from a given course do not simply reflect a cohort dominated by already affluent students.
Alongside the average graduate salaries for specific courses, theaverage graduate and non-graduate salaries should be displayed. Prospective students could be shown the current salary for a full-time minimum wage worker of £23,795 to help them judge if going to university would be financially worthwhile.[xxiii]
[vi] Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Students at the Heart of the System, June 2011, p.73 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31384/11- 944-higher-education-students-at-heart-of-system.pdf
Autism, a form of neurodivergence, is a naturally occurring neurodevelopmental variation that manifests in differences in how people experience and interact with the world.
The focus is often on communication “deficits” and “repetitive and rigid” behaviour but, quite frankly, this focus and these words say more about how non-autistic (allistic) people interpret our behaviour and their own discomfort with the same.
Our own experiences of being autistic are a lot more expansive and encompass autistic joy and strengths, alongside the significant and often unnoticed challenges we experience day-to-day.
At different points in time, we both made the conscious, and somewhat fraught, decision to share our autism diagnoses in professional contexts. For the most part we were hugely relieved to be met with compassion from colleagues and a desire to support us to make the necessary changes to level the playing field.
Yet, in the background of these positive experiences, there is a near-constant battle with systems, processes and neuronormative expectations that undermine individual attempts to be supportive.
We wanted to share the biggest challenges we’ve faced in sharing our diagnoses and attempting to build afresh work practices and environments that will allow us to thrive.
Attempts to normalise
On more than one occasion after sharing our diagnoses, we’ve both been met with responses along the lines of “we’re all a bit like that though”.
While we assume these comments are intended to “normalise” our experiences and perhaps reassure us that we’re not that different, such comments are somewhat missing the point.
Firstly, autistic people are human too, so our autistic traits are very much part of the human condition. For example, the struggles we face in some social contexts may be experienced by allistic people sometimes.
And our desire to seek refuge in routines is something many people can relate to, particularly in times of great upheaval. What sets our experiences apart is the depth, duration and the degree to which these experiences impact our capacity to thrive.
Secondly, late discovery or diagnosis often comes about after a lifetime of deeply felt misunderstandings and a perpetual sense of being somehow wrong. The challenges autistic people face have very real implications such as significant impact on mental wellbeing alongside higher risks of substance abuse, accidents and offending behaviour as well as lower levels of income and education.
While finally getting answers to a lifetime’s worth of questions is broadly positive, never underestimate how earth-shattering a late discovery or diagnoses can be. It can completely unmoor you from an identity you worked hard to craft and maintain, often over many decades.
To be set adrift whilst trying to carry on “business as usual” can be incredibly disorienting and well-meaning comments intended to find common ground can feel dismissive and leave us, once again, feeling misunderstood.
To receive a diagnosis can be confirmation (or even a revelation) that you have been leaning on masks and performativity this whole time, borrowing bits of behaviour and social styles from others, in order to keep up with fast-paced workplace dynamics.
But if our identity is a mosaic of other people’s characteristics, who exactly are we? We therefore often find that the diagnosis we hoped would answer our questions, instead serves up a hearty existential crisis. Coupled with the need to continue functioning both in personal and professional contexts, whilst running that background process, can be exhausting.
The adjustments minefield
Often a motivating factor in sharing an autism diagnosis is the need to access workplace adjustments, though it should be noted you don’t need a diagnosis to do so.
What many people won’t realise is that identifying the adjustments you need, and getting these put in place, often feels like a full-time job in and of itself. We’ve both experienced scenarios where we’ve been encouraged to share what we need to work at our best, only to find ourselves somewhat stumped.
We’ve defaulted to so many complex and energy-consuming workarounds to overcome the barriers in our environment, that it can be hard to pick apart common workplace challenges from those which come about from being part of a neurominority.
Plus, autistic people aren’t often comfortable around change, so if we’ve established a workaround, it can be difficult to consider an alternative, despite how much more efficient it could be!
This is the nature of having differences that are somewhat invisible – you don’t realise that everyone isn’t quietly battling the same complexities.
What we have both realised is that it’s essential to have the time and space for ongoing conversations around our evolving understanding of our needs. Too often the default is to use prescriptive forms and processes to put adjustments in place, whereas we have both benefitted from ongoing dialogue with managers who are committed to ensuring the barriers we experience are removed, in as much as possible.
Our hope is that more people will start to understand that a diagnosis or discovery, and the sharing of this new understanding, should form the start of a conversation, rather than an outcome to be compensated for.
Neuronormative expectations
The majority of people will be blissfully unaware of what we mean by neuronormative expectations because, if you’re neurotypical, it’s likely that you subscribe to the dominant social norms without much effort.
Most people, for example, assume good eye contact means you’re paying attention, and arriving late, particularly persistently, indicates a lack of commitment and/or interest. If you’re autistic, lack of sustained eye contact can be used to aid concentration, especially when processing auditory information, and lateness can be down to a multitude of reasons from difficulty with transitions to the need to avoid the ‘chit chat’ that often precedes the start of something.
It’s also worth noting that these norms are culturally located and direct eye contact, for example, is considered disrespectful or invasive in some countries. It’s a wonder to both of us then that such subjective meanings and interpretations have become normalised standards that we are somewhat required to adhere to, to be accepted.
It is also worth noting that we may well be thinking about all of the above whilst trying to judge the correct level of eye contact to be making; this is just part of the complex backroom processing and calculations we do on a daily basis!
With all of this in mind we’d encourage colleagues to think about assumptions around what it means, and looks like, to undertake certain activities that most assume shared understanding of.
We can certainly identify a range of areas where our interpretations diverge, such as notions around communicating effectively, networking or being professional.
A good example is the way in which we’ve co-written this piece, which has come about through an initial text based online interaction, followed by asynchronous collaboration. At the time of finalising this piece we have still never “met” online or in person but have engaged in a rich exchange of ideas that have allowed for meaningful collaboration.
If colleagues could be open to alternative interpretations and manifestations of social norms, higher education would be the richer for it.
Allyship is needed
With these challenges in mind there are things that can be done to support late-diagnosed colleagues. Essentially these centre around allyship and actively working to acknowledge discrimination and unconscious bias.
Consider how you respond when someone shares their autism discovery or diagnosis
Can you approach the conversation with curiosity, accepting that the experience of being autistic might, in fact, be very different from your own? Central to this is recognising the limitations of your knowledge and experience.
It is a natural response to want to normalise your experience with the person sharing their diagnosis with you, but that may not be the comfort you expect it to be, and might accidentally undermine the identity they are still coming to terms with.
Rather than saying “I do that too”, or “aren’t we all a little bit like that though?”, create a space where the person sharing their diagnosis with you can take time to form their own words, and be sure to centre them in the words you use with them.
What part do you have to play in removing barriers
For us, everyone has a role to play in removing barriers that prevent us from thriving. Whether directly as a manager supporting autistic colleagues to navigate often overly complicated HR processes, or as a peer becoming aware that your colleagues need to do things in a different way.
You don’t need to know someone’s diagnosis to be an ally, you can simply start by identifying if there are moments you default to your preferred ways of doing things while inadvertently overlooking a colleague’s genuine need to things differently. If you come across resistance that is inexplicable to you, withhold judgement and instead become curious about alternative ways of thinking and being.
Reflect on what norms and expectations you assume
Assumed shared understanding and narrow interpretations of behaviour is the space where most unconscious bias sits. The reality is that the imaginary social contract we have all supposedly signed is just that – a fiction that not all of us have been granted access to.
Can you make space to co-create shared understanding around what it means to “communicate”, for example? Can you become aware of your bias that “good communication” manifests through narrowly defined behaviours? Or can good communication also be non-spoken, asynchronous or graciously feature enthusiastic interruption, or deep dive monologues?
Ultimately, whether you are an individual in whom an autistic colleague quietly confides, a senior manager with the agency to affect positive change, a HR professional implementing processes, or someone involved in developing policy – everyone has a part to play in making higher education a place where autistic people can thrive.
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SAN DIEGO — The higher education sector is facing an onslaught of challenges, including attacks from the Trump administration, fading public confidence and the demographic cliff. But higher education leaders didn’t shy away from these issues at the annual ASU+GSV Summit, an education and technology conference held this week in San Diego.
“The moment is actually a productive moment for us, because we can and should and will use some of the chaos in order to build new kinds of institutions, new infrastructures, new ways of thinking,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, during a discussion Wednesday.
Below, we’re rounding up three key takeaways from higher education leaders on where the sector needs to go and how it can be more innovative.
Higher ed needs to refocus on student success
Mitchell pointed to multiple threats converging in the higher education sector, including eroding public confidence in colleges and universities. That forces the sector to grapple with important questions.
“What are we delivering? Is it the right thing? Is it being delivered to the right people? And is it being delivered to the right people in the right way?” Mitchell said. “I think that the answer to all of those is, ‘Not quite,’ and so that’s the existential threat.”
He pointed to the national college completion rate, which measures the share of first-time students at degree-granting institutions who complete their credentials within six years. That rate has risen slightly above 60% in recent years.
“One hundred percent of the people who come to our doors want a degree,” Mitchell said. “But we disappoint 40% of them. And over time, that has accreted into a group of people in America — Americans who are our community — who say it didn’t work.”
But centering student success can reverse that trend, Mitchell suggested. Carnegie Classifications, a popular system for categorizing colleges and universities that’s housed at ACE, is using that focus to bring changes to its framework.
For example, the system plans to release new classifications in the coming weeks based on student access and earnings, with an emphasis on measuring whether colleges have student bodies representative of their regions.
“We’re going to look at institution by institution — are you serving the students in the communities that you serve?” said Timothy Knowles, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
A crisis can spur innovation
Fear can be a motivator to embrace innovation, said Kathleen deLaski, founder of the nonprofit Education Design Lab.
“Let’s not waste a good crisis,” deLaski said during a panel Tuesday.
She pointed to enrollment challenges at community colleges. In 2023, The Hechinger Report found that they had shed just over one-third of their students since 2010. However, after years of declines, fall enrollment has been ticking up at public two-year colleges since 2022, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Community college leaders began looking for new educational models amid the enrollment crunch, deLaski said. And recently, interest in short-term credentials have been fueling some of the sector’s enrollment gains.
“It’s in the new kinds of short-term pathways, certificates, even dual enrollment in high school,” deLaski said.
That’s also been a focus at Education Design Lab. Since 2021, the nonprofit has worked with over 100 community colleges to create “micro-pathways” — two or more stackable credentials that can be completed in under a year. The pathways are intended to result in jobs at or above the local region’s median wage and put students on track to earn an associate degree.
Innovation could come from unexpected places
Disruption to higher education is more likely to come from certain areas of the sector than others, Paul LeBlanc said Tuesday. LeBlanc is the co-founder of Matter and Space, an artificial intelligence and education company, and he previously led Southern New Hampshire for two decades.
“Where it is hardest are institutions that are first with sterling reputations and big endowments,” he said. “That’s a huge impediment to innovation.”
Public systems with strong unions may also struggle to be disruptive, LeBlanc said, though he added he was not anti-union.
On the other hand, colleges often seen as innovative don’t typically fall into those buckets.
He gave the example of Southern New Hampshire University, which he described as an “unknown, small, whatever-tier” college before it turned into an online behemoth serving over 160,000 students during his tenure.
LeBlanc also pointed to Arizona State University, the college that helped launch the annual conference. Arizona State’s enrollment has ballooned in the past two decades, reaching over 180,000 in-person and online students in the 2023-24 academic year. The university’s president, Michael Crow, has been largely credited with transforming the university into one with a national brand.
“It was kind of the joke school. It was a safety school, it wasn’t the flagship,” LeBlanc said, adding that Crow had “lots of running room” to reinvent the university.
Other innovators could come from these types of spaces.
“Look for the innovators to be on the boundaries, the unknown, the unencumbered places that have the freedom and the movement to want to sort of reinvent themselves,” LeBlanc said.
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Dive Brief:
Sixteen states and the District of Columbia sued the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday for halting previously approved extended spending timelines for emergency pandemic funding, calling the department’s action “tremendously harmful” to states, school districts, private schools and contractors.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, called the action “arbitrary and capricious” and said it violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The plaintiffs are seeking an order requiring the Education Department to honor the spending extensions.
The policy pivot is causing states and districts to cancel tutoring services, facility improvement projects, reading interventions, after-school programming and more. District and school staff layoffs are likely if the federal government does not make reimbursement payments, the lawsuit said.
Dive Insight:
The Education Department’s March 28 letter canceling the extensions, sent at 5:03 p.m. on a Friday, has “already caused substantial confusion” and financial upheaval regarding late liquidation for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, the plaintiffs said.
States, districts, private schools and contractors have already created budgets, hired staff, offered services to families and children and developed operating plans based on pre-approved spending extensions, according to their lawsuit.
In Arizona, for example, a school district on the Navajo reservation will likely need to lay off teachers and staff to cover costs that were supposed to be paid for by American Rescue Plan-ESSER dollars. That money had been pre-approved by the Education Department for a tutoring service for reading and math instruction and to repair aging buildings. After the Education Department rescinded the spending extensions, the tutoring service and infrastructure project were terminated, the lawsuit said.
The Education Department’s one-page March 28 letter, signed by U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, did offer states an opportunity to continue to extend spending by reapplying for Education Department approvals on a per-contract basis. But McMahon’s letter also said the spending extensions were “not consistent with the Department’s priorities” and that states had failed to meet spending deadlines set out in federal regulations.
While spending deadlines for all three congressionally approved allocations for K-12 COVID-19 recovery have expired, the Education Department under the Biden administration allowed for a longer spending runway, giving states and districts an extra 14 months to spend down the funds.
For instance, the spending deadline for ARP-ESSER was Jan. 28, but the late liquidation deadline is March 30, 2026. For funds under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, the original spending deadline was Jan. 29, 2024, but the extended spending deadline was March 28. The spending extension for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act was March 28, 2024.
In late February, the Education Department told K-12 Dive that about $2.5 billion out of a total $121.9 billion in ARP-ESSER funds remained to be spent by districts in the 41 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia that had received extensions. About $433 million was left to be spent by states under ARP’s Emergency Assistance to Non-Public Schools allocation.
The lawsuit says several states received approvals from the Education Department for ESSER spending extensions after President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. For example, Illinois said the Education Department approved its request on Jan. 22 to extend spending under ARP-ESSER. The state said it still has $77.2 million left to spend in federal COVID funds for education.
One state — Oregon — said it submitted a request for late liquidation of EANS funds at 5:02 p.m. on March 28, or one minute before the Education Department letter went out. The state has not received a response.
Pennsylvania submitted a spending extension request for EANS funds on Feb. 10 but the Education Department has not responded to the state’s “repeated requests,” according to the lawsuit. About a month earlier, on Jan. 8, the department did grant Pennsylvania an extension for ESSER funds targeting supports for homeless children and youth.
While there was no hard deadline for states to make late liquidation requests, January 2024 guidance from the Education Department recommended submissions be made prior to Dec. 31, 2024, for ARP funds so there would be minimal disruption to accessing funds.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress are also calling for the Education Department to reverse its cancellation of ESSER spending extensions, saying the department changed the rules abruptly and has no recognition of the lasting impacts of the pandemic on students and schools.
Maryland’s Attorney General Anthony Brown, in a Thursday statement, said, “The Trump Administration’s decision to cut this funding has thrown Maryland schools into turmoil and uncertainty and threatens valuable programs that help homeless and low-income students recover from the painful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
He added, “This is a breathtakingly heartless action that threatens to change children’s futures for the worse, and our Office will not stand for it.”
Thursday’s lawsuit was filed by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and the mostly Democratic state attorneys general of Arizona, California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon. All the attorneys general are Democratic, except Hawaii’s, whose office is nonpartisan.
This afternoon, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation could proceed under immigration law. But the fight over the constitutionality of that law continues.
The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the secretary of state nearly unchecked authority to deport a legal permanent resident on nothing more than his whim if the secretary believes the person poses “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Below is FIRE’s statement, attributable to Legal Director Will Creeley:
Can expressing an opinion that the government doesn’t like justify a green card holder’s arrest, detention, and deportation? That’s what this case comes down to — and it’s a question the courts must answer. The government is holding up a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that purports to say “yes.” But the principles enshrined in the First Amendment say “no.”
Allowing a single government official sweeping and nearly unchecked power to pick and choose individuals to deport based on beliefs alone, without alleging a single crime, crosses a line that should never be crossed in a free society.
The only “crime” the government has offered was that Mahmoud Khalil expressed a disfavored political opinion. If that’s a crime in America, every single one of us is guilty.
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The U.S. Department of Education on Friday moved to terminate federal K-12 funding for the Maine Department of Education, following through on its promise to cut off the state and ultimately others if they do not enforce Title IX so as to keep transgender students from girls’ locker rooms, restrooms and athletic teams.
The move marks the first time the Trump administration has officially initiated a cut in federal funding to a state K-12 school system over civil rights violations.
The department at the same time referred its Title IX investigation of Maine to the U.S. Department of Justice for enforcement — after multiple threats that it would do so if the state did not sign onto a resolution agreement within 10 days of the agency finding Maine in violation of Title IX.
“The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” said Craig Trainor, acting assistant education secretary for civil rights in an April 11 statement.
Gov. Janet Mills “would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom — be careful what you wish for,” Trainor said. “Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”
Mills has maintained since the investigation’s launch that the state is not in violation of Title IX. The governor has said the federal investigation is “not just about who can compete on the athletic field,” but rather “about whether a President can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation. I believe he cannot.”
A swift investigation
The directed investigation — meaning one initiated without a public complaint — was initiated by the department on Feb. 21 and concluded less than a month later in March. The move was precipitated by a public spat between Mills and Trump in February over the state’s transgender athlete policies, during which Mills threatened to see Trump in court.
The day the investigation was launched, alongside a nearly identical one into Maine by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also over Title IX, Mills said the outcome was “all but predetermined.”
Indeed, the investigation’s directed nature, quick turnaround time, high stakes attached, and referral to the Department of Justice — which traditionally has been reserved for egregious cases — has raised eyebrows in the education civil rights community.
The seemingly targeted, quick and aggressive enforcement strategy marks a significant shift from education civil rights enforcement under past administrations. Investigations traditionally took months or years, involved interviews and other investigative tools, and concluded with a negotiation with schools to bring them into compliance with federal law. Resolution agreements often included changes to school district operations like conducting climate surveys or hiring or training staff to ensure all students have access to an equal education.
Resolution agreement rebuffed
In this case, however, the administration gave Maine 10 days to sign a draft resolution agreement that would change state and district policies to define “females” by “a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova),” and “males” by having “a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.” “Gender” would be the same as “sex” under the agreement.
The draft agreement also would have required the state to apologize to each cisgender girl impacted by the state’s transgender female athlete policy “for allowing her educational experience and participation in school sports to be marred by sex discrimination.”
After the state refused to sign the agreement, the department warned officials on March 31 that it would send the case to the Department of Justice by April 11.
“Under prior administrations, enforcement was an illusory proposition. No more,” said Trainor in a March 31 statement. “The Trump-McMahon Education Department is moving quickly to ensure that federal funds no longer support patently illegal practices that harm women and girls.”
While cutting off states or districts from funds was always within the Education Department’s power, it was a stick that was rarely used in past administrations, and especially not over Title IX, according to the Association of Title IX Administrators.
Within three months under this Trump administration, the department has threatened the cancellation of more than $9.5 billion for Ivy League universities over alleged Title VI and Title IX violations related to alleged antisemitism and LGBTQ+ policies, threatened some 60 colleges and a handful of districts with additional loss of funding over allegations of antisemitism, and promised that “this is only the beginning.”
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Full-time faculty salaries rose for the second year in a row, even after adjusting for inflation, according to preliminary compensation data from the American Association of University Professors.
Fall 2024 salaries rose an average of 3.8% year over year, though inflation brought that growth down to an increase of 0.9%, according to the study.
Even with two years of gains, faculty compensation has not fully recovered from the pandemic period, which brought a 7.5% effective drop in salaries from 2019 to 2022, AAUP said.
Faculty’s inflation-adjusted salaries are still climbing out of their pandemic dip
Year over year growth in nominal and real salaries from academic years 2017-18 to 2024-25.
During an era of constrained budgets for many institutions — with job and program cuts making headlines — institutions are under a countervailing pressure to invest in their people and infrastructure after years of belt-tightening. Some colleges have given employees raises even as they make budget cuts in other areas.
Preliminary data from AAUP’s latest faculty study shows salaries making some headway even in an era of slashed budgets. Fall’s salary increases for full-time faculty followed an inflation-adjusted 0.4% increase in 2023.
Those of course are averages, and figures varied across rank and job types. Associate professors’ salaries, for example, typically grew at a faster clip in the 2024-25 academic year than professors or assistant professors — while lecturers’ salaries rose faster than all of those positions, with growth over 6% at the doctoral and master’s level institutions, according to AAUP’s study.
The survey also found continued gender disparities for professor compensation, with men earning nearly $26,000 more than women at doctoral institutions and about $8,000 more at master’s institutions.
College and university presidents typically made around four times or more than the average faculty member across most institution types, according to the study.
Part-time faculty made an average of $4,093 per class section in the 2023-24 academic year. But their compensation “varied widely” depending on where they worked, AAUP said.
At private nonprofits, a part-time faculty member could make an average of $1,950 per section teaching at associate-granting institutions compared to $6,481 at bachelor’s-degree colleges.
Maximum payments could run into the tens of thousands of dollars across institution types. Meanwhile, some part-time faculty could earn as little as $700 per section teaching at a public university.
Just over one-third of colleges, 34.4%, made retirement plan contributions for at least some part-time faculty, and fewer than one-third, 32.5%, contributed to insurance premiums for at least some part-timers.
The AAUP analysis is based on surveys of more than 800 U.S. institutions, with data on roughly 370,000 full-time and 90,000 part-time faculty members.
CUPA-HR also found annual salary growth across much of the sector in the 2024-25 academic year.
After factoring in inflation of 2.7%, salaries went up 1.2% for administrators, 1% for professional staff, 1.1% for general staff and 0.5% for nontenure-track faculty, according to CUPA-HR. Real salaries for tenure-track faculty fell 0.1%.
As with AAUP, CUPA-HR noted that higher education salaries still fell short of pre-pandemic levels despite growth. The largest gaps are in salaries for tenure-track faculty — paid 10.2% less than in the pre-pandemic era after adjusting for inflation — and non-tenure-track teaching faculty, who are paid 7.6% less.
